Roxane Butterfly and World Dance
INTRODUCTION Her mentor, master tapper Jimmy Slyde who died on May 16, dubbed her "Papillon (butterfly) because…she flies!” She’s also called a “maverick in her field.” A 2006 Guggenheim choreography Fellow, Roxane Butterfly is the only woman tap-dancer to receive a New York Bessie Award (Outstanding Creative Achievement, 1999). Not shy with her opinions, Butterfly the activist participated in a peace tour with Palestinian and Israeli performers.
Born in the south of France, her Mediterranean town of Toulon was a crossroads. Five blocks from the port, American sailors, European military, and immigrants from Viet Nam, Senegal and Morocco, packed the market where her parents had a craft-wares store. Roxane grew-up inside this cultural whirlwind.
Her unorthodox tap training—her first teacher in France didn’t know you were supposed to tap with heels as well as toes—augmented by sports as a teen, gives her dancing a unique character.
After touring the world with her all women dance-music show—"BeauteeZ'n The Beat"—Butterfly recently launched a new show—"Djellaba Groove," named for the rhythms of the Near Eastern countries she heard growing up. By her own account, no longer an “emerging artist” but not yet an “elder,” in a several-hour conversation we explored what lead to her life in tap and her current thinking about her art.
This picture says a lot about life as a female hoofer....NYC Photo by Leslie Lyons
What inspired you to combine tap with world music? I’m from France. I’m not black. I needed to understand my attraction to jazz, to tap, to the black culture that comes with it. I left France when I was 18 because I felt different, and I haven’t always felt accepted in tap.
I needed to find my roots. My mother is Moroccan, my father Swiss, and in some ways I’m more American than I am French. Being in New York allowed me to be everything I am, but it’s not my roots. I found them in my old neighborhood - in the Arab and Egyptian music I heard when I was young.
Tell me about your choreographic process? I don’t have a space. I have 2 pieces of plywood I dance on. I construct everything doing mathematics. I choreograph in place what will move across the floor. Final decisions wait until musicians and dancers are together in the theatre, sometimes on the day of the show. Then we unfold our wings.
I had an accident. Not being able to dance triggered thoughts about what I’ll do when I can’t perform. I tried to imagine what people see, what makes up my language, what defines my dancing as me. I realized I dance to what my body retains of rhythm. Choreography is a long process. I’m an improviser so it’s frustrating to set things I can dance a million ways. I spent 2 months choreographing the movement of the head for my first piece - so many options.
Recently, I decided to choreograph less familiar, traditional music, new rhythms, things I’ve never danced to. I discovered that if I created different, simple, rhythmic patterns for several dancers, together we replicated the polyrhythms of the music. Some patterns are very structured; rhythms, steps, patterns are set. But the melody, the relationships are open, improvised.
Jazz musicians mostly read music, but ethnic musicians often don’t. I work alone with the musicians helping them learn how to react to my body moves. The more we set, the more we may mess up. This structure allows both precision and freedom. [See David Michalek’s "Slow Motion "]
How much input or freedom do your dancers have within the choreography? The choreography has to leave room for improvisation, for the dancers to dance like themselves. Tap is individual, not mimetic. I want you to show your personality. What I spend time on with the dancers and the musicians is interpretation. Is the movement cold, hot, blue, green, a frame for the action. I set the mood, the time of day, then I let them trip.
How has working with world music changed or influenced your tapping? It’s like being a kid, a rediscovery. I’ve gained knowledge, authorized myself to break the rules. I studied ancient Andalusia music in Morocco. The musicians told me to study flamenco. It’s foreign, but I can see how it informs my tap. Flamenco’s like tap, not because of pounding the floor, but because of its relationship to music, to improvisation, because you make music with your body. I became more and more interested in it. I lived there so I could study real flamenco. When I went back to tap things had shifted, my skills were enhanced, I danced and taught differently. I don’t use my heel the same. I use more silence, more stop-and-go. In jazz you always arrive at the 32nd bar, but in flamenco it’s not set, instead you guide with your energy.
Collaborating with Moroccans and Nigerians, learning how to work with their rhythms, I realized that this is the first time in my life I can really hear music. I’ve been experimenting with trance dance music from Morocco, flamenco rhythms, mostly in 12. I’m dancing to 7s and 4s—rhumba, Gitano (gypsy) music, tango, bolero. Flamenco has palmas, clapping patterns with accents in different places. I’m introducing those subdivisions into my rhythm spending hours in the studio searching for tap patterns that are syncopated but match the musical dynamics and rhythms; new steps but still faithful to what tap is. I don’t want a fusion that makes me forget who I am.
Musically, I love how tap swings, but we’ve only danced to jazz and that didn‘t allow us to grow. Jazz has become intellectual, the body-mind connection has been cut, people don’t dance to jazz anymore. World music doesn’t separate movement, gender, and genre. Flamenco musicians get up and dance. I’d love to see a bass player dance.
I get criticized for what this choreography is not, but I don’t care if you don’t call it tap, if it’s not pure. I think the best way to honor my form is to create my own music. *(Roxane improvising with musicians “Tap dance after party in Reus”
Tell me why you decided to change the name of your company to World Beats?
I‘ve always been an individual artist. I don’t have a company, only a flexible collection of artists who work on my projects. My technique is very elaborate. It doesn’t look good on men; I’m too light and fast. I use my hips a lot. Originally I thought only women could dance my work. But, after a while I realized the best I could do for women in tap was to be the best artist I could be, no matter whom I was dancing with. I didn’t want to create a reverse separatism. That’s when I changed the project name to Roxane Butterfly’s World Beats. "Djellaba Groove," the journey of the migrating sole, developed when I realized the gypsy trail leads through India, Morocco and Andalusia into Spain. It’s my first attempt to reconnect with Africa through my Mediterranean connection to France. When you travel, do you learn new dances, movement styles, in the countries you travel to?
I want to learn the real thing, onsite. I exchange lessons. In Sevilla I went to flamenco jams and tapped. I put myself on the spot by going where music is being played, where dancers are.
I received an Arts International grant to go to French-speaking Africa. I approached girls, mothers, and teachers in schools. “We [Westerners] don’t have any ritual that marks passage to womanhood. I’m interested in your music and songs.” I never mentioned circumcision. I asked to them to sing a song in both Malinke and Sousou. “Do they have the same meaning? If this is supposed to make you happy, why do you look sad?” Then they talked. I used my ability to dance, my knowledge of music to jam with them and that helped open them up.
What do you do best as a teacher? I teach endurance, breathing, and stretching. You need strong abs, backs, and arms in order to free your movement. And I teach time, how to be a musician so you can create movement musically, as a narrative. Many young teachers have no lyricism, no clue of what it means to be a bandleader. That part of the process has been amputated by the lack of live music.
What do you think you could do better? I have to have more patience. I’m demanding; I want results. I [only] have two ankles and I don’t want to waste them.
Tell me about working with handicapped children? I was invited to an event in France. I thought I was teaching mentally handicapped teens. I decided I’d work with sensation, emotion, lights, music. It turned out they were physically handicapped, in wheel chairs. I felt silly with my tap shoes.
“Well, I didn’t expect this,” I told them. “I guess you’re sitting on your interesting instrument. I can’t go through space as fast as you.” Based on the capacity of their chairs, I found ways for them to cross space focusing on time. When I tried to have them do it on tempo some were too handicapped and couldn’t. So some of them pushed or pulled each other. They all wanted to keep on tapping!
It was a real tap class—music, re-inventing space, working together, creating possibilities, creating a story—this is the essence of my art form. And I didn’t under estimate what the students could do, that they could do things I couldn’t. We mixed our capabilities. It was hard, but it made me connect back to tap’s essence.
What has it meant to you that you have been able to have the life of an artist? Ups-and-downs. You have to know how to be alone, be strong. I’ve chosen this and I can’t back up. This is the only way I’ve ever lived. I have no children, no health insurance, no regular living. Some days I regret it. With time passing it gets harder. As a woman, the choices you’ve made, you think of them as sacrifices. It’s not easy so you have to know why you do it.
There are rewards—being on stage, generating art—and I have other interests, you live for the ups. You keep nurturing your art. I go to the studio every day. You keep ready for what comes, and the universe provides.
Clips of Roxane Butterfly’s new movie, Hoofologies, as well as performance footage, and tour and class schedules can be accessed fromwww.myspace.com/roxanebutterfly. Also see http://worldbeats.free.fr/index_bis.html.